I Totally Made This – Easter (And 2nd) Edition

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I totally made that.  And it hung on our door for Easter.

Want to know how?

It’s super involved. and I have no pictures of the process.

How long has it been since I nominated myself for worst blogger of the year?

First.  Supplies-

• A wire hanger
• A bunch of plastic easter eggs (sizes are up to you – I bought different sizes but mainly used the smaller ones) – Make sure you buy eggs that have holes in both ends.  This is very important.
• A hot glue gun
• Ribbon

Second. Directions-

1. Plug in that hot glue gun and heat it up!  I always hate when I start and forgot to preheat the glue.
2. Shape your wire hanger into a shape that closes resembles a circle.  As closely as possible.  It’s important to note that you shouldn’t permanently “undo” the hook.  Leave the hook at the top.  If you look at the pics above you can see that I used the ‘hook’ to hang the wreath.
3. You do however want to temporarily untwist the top so that your circle is open.  Remember those important holes in each end of the eggs? Thread the wire hanger THROUGH those holes.  Mine had a couple holes and so I changed it randomly to use different holes, and to have the eggs face in different directions. (For instance, pointy edge first, then fat end first, blah blah blah).
4. When you are done threading the eggs on, reattach the loop at the top – you must do this now because it’ll be pretty much impossible at the end.  Shoot some hot glue on it for good measure.
5. Start gluing the eggs on to the ones you threaded.  At first, it’s going to move on you.  The eggs will rotate.  You’ve got to be patient and use a lot of glue.  From the back, this thing is a mess, but if you do it right the glue will all be on the door side of the thing and you’ll never be able to tell that you emptied a ridiculous amount of hot glue on it.
6. Continue gluing eggs to the ones already on the wreath, filling in any “bare” looking spots until you are satisfied.  It’s a personal preference thing as to where you think looks like it “needs” an egg.
7. When you are satisfied, cover any place that you can FROM THE BACK with hot glue.  When I did mine, I added the eggs from the front, which is most likely what you will be doing.  So for this step, gently flip it over then load up the cracks with the hot glue from the back.  Better to have more than less – so long as its not that noticeable from the front.
8. Let the glue dry completely (see your glue for guidance on this) and then attach a ribbon if thats your thing.  I recommend a ribbon at the top to hide that hook.
9. Hang and enjoy!

 

Happy Easter in September, people!

 

 

Removing old Vinyl/Lino Tile

Today we will talk about the steps we used to remove the old, cracked, filthy tiles in our kitchen.   It’s a lot of work, time wise, but not really muscle-wise.  I shouldn’t really comment on that since I had minimal involvement with it, but I will say that all that bending over really does a number on your back.  So take that in mind. However, as far as DIY goes, it’s simple and you probably have the skills needed to pull it off.

Our Original Kitchen Flooring

Say bye bye to that old floor.

First, gather your supplies:

• Knee pads (optional, but not really optional)
• Adhesive Remover
• Gloves
• Putty Knife/Scraper
• Iron (or I suppose a heat gun would work, but we used our iron – which, be forewarned, was ruined & had to be replaced.  We also used a hair dryer in some places, but the iron worked best.)
• Plastic sheeting (just the cheap stuff they sell in the paint department – like we used to cover out cabinets when we painted out countertops)
• A bucket (that you will fill with soap & water)
• Scrub brush
• Time (I’d say, a weekend – depending on the area of your floor)

 

Admittedly, I did not take very many pictures of this process.  It went by pretty quickly and it’s really quite self-explanatory.  Here are your basic steps:

1. Place the iron on top of the tile to be removed.  Keep the iron moving.  The heat from the iron (or heat gun or hair dryer) liquifies the adhesive and the tile will come loose.
2. Put your putty knife/scraper under the edge of the tile and separate the tile from the floor.  If it doesn’t come up easily, put the iron over it for a little longer.  Just keep rotating between ironing the tile and scraping underneath the tile until you’ve easily removed it.  After the first couple tiles, you’ll find your sweet spot.
3. Once you’ve got a few tiles up (Kevin removed about six 12 inch tiles at a time), put on your gloves & cover your freshly uncovered subfloor in the adhesive remover.  Be generous.  This stuff looks like almost-clear snot.  We put on a nice 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick layer of it.
4. Cover your adhesive remover smeared section with the plastic sheeting.  You do this to seal out the air while giving the adhesive remover some time to work.
5. Wait 15-20 minutes.  (I suppose during this time you could start ironing/scraping up some more tile, but we didn’t.  We just used the time for a nice break.)
6. After your time has passed, pull up the plastic & discard.  Then, using your putty knife/scraper, scrape up the adhesive remover (and, accordingly, the adhesive).
7. With fresh soap (we used dawn dish washing liquid) and water, use your scrub brush to scrub the floor.  I wouldn’t even go so far as to say “scrub vigorously” – just scrub it up.  This gets the remaining adhesive off and cleans the floor up nice.
8. Repeat these 7 steps until the entire floor is done.  Be sure to let your entire floor dry before proceeding to the next step of “leveling the floor” and subsequently “installing the new floor.”

 

It should be noted that the ironing/heating element is not really necessary.  You can just scrape up the old tiles, but then you risk damaging your subfloor.  We wanted to keep and reuse our subfloor, but if this is not an issue for you (you already plan to replace the subfloor), then you can just scrape away.

 

Simple!  Voila!  Do you have any tips/questions/etc?

 

Stay tuned for our tips on leveling the floor, installing the floor, and the big reveal!

 

The Cabinets are painted!

Painted Cabinets

Hello, gorgeous!  I am so happy this step is done!

There are a ton of posts that outline how to paint cabinets.  In no particular order, here are the one’s we consulted:

• Young House Love – link
• Better Homes and Gardens – link
• This Old House – link
• Curbly – link

We studied these four tutorials and then came up with our own variation.  I’d say if 1 is just rushing through it and getting it done and 10 is taking every single precaution and step to do it exactly correct, we we’re probably a 5 or a 6.  We learned a lot along the way about how to properly use deglosser and whose better at what jobs when splitting tasks.  Here is the basic rundown of our steps that we utilized:

1. Remove all the doors and drawer-fronts and all of the hardware from them (like the pulls and hinges).
2. TSP everything.  Really get that junk clean.
3. Degloss.  Everything.  For more on what we learned about deglossing – see below.
4. Fill in all knicks and the holes leftover from the pulls if you won’t be using them again.
5. Sand.  Everything.  We used a high-grit (a 220 worked well for us) to just smooth everything out evenly.
6. Wipe everything down really well.  Dust is enemy.  Dog hair is worse than dust.
7. One thin THIN THIN coat of primer.
8. Let the primer dry and cure overnight, then a very light sand over thin coat of primer.  Make sure its smooth.
9. Wipe everything down really well.  Again dust and dog hair are baaad.
10. Repeat 6-9.
11. Once you are satisfied that your primer is properly cured (READ THE CAN), move on to painting.
12. Paint the very first very thin coat.
13. Follow your paint can on how long to wait until the second coat, then second coat on everything.
14. Once your second coat is on, we gave it abou 20-24 hours to just sit and cure, then we mounted the doors.
15. Attach new cabinet pulls/handles/etc.
16. Enjoy.

So here are my caveats.

Deglosser.

This was our first attempt at using deglosser.  Neither of us had a huge grasp of how deglosser really worked – until now.  For the cabinet doors that we started with, we just wiped it on and 15 minutes later we figured hey it must be done.  Just like the bottle said.  For the first doors we did, we didn’t do anything else.  We just started priming after we wiped post-deglossing.  For the cabinets, and for the second batch of doors we did, we implemented the sanding. HOWEVER, for the remaining cabinet and last door that we did not do with the first batch (this cabinet had been removed and left in the basement and we decided we’d hang it back up – so we just left it til last to do), we deglossed MULTIPLE times.  It turns out, there is a ton of gloss on these, and the more deglosser we use, the better the wood looked.  They ended up looking like bare wood when we were done.  We are actually still working on these remaining cabinets, so I will let you know if theres any difference in appearance in the finish.

Also, I will say that for the ones we did not sand between deglossing and priming, the primer was still a little tacky when we went to paint.  They sat for WEEKS and were still tacky.  I called the Behr hotline and the guy said it was fine.  The doors that were like this have been hanging in the kitchen for a couple of weeks now and I can’t tell the difference between them and the ones that were sanded.

The lesson?  Degloss multiple times THEN sand.  No matter what the bottle says.

Dog hair is the enemy.

I really have no speech on that.. but there are little tiny flecks of dog hair in our finish in some places.  Why?  Because our dogs shed so much we couldn’t control it.  It’s not really obvious unless you shove your face up to the exact spot where there is a piece.  And really theres only like 4 or 5 of them over the entire thing, so it could’ve been worse.

The lesson?  Shave your dogs before doing this.

Now on to what we used.

BEHR Premium Plus 1-Gal. Stain-Blocking Primer and Sealer Interior

Our cabinets were gross.  We TSP’ed everything twice.  And if anybody has worked with TSP you know that stuff will remove your skin from your bones so dirt is no problem.  But we were still worried the grossness of them would come through the paint.  As a result, I made sure to buy a stain-blocking primer and sealer.  It did the trick.  Follow the directions on the can and if you have any questions, call the 1800 number on the can.  I did and they were awesome and helpful.

 

Behr paint in “Silver Drop”

Even though we initially started out to get a dark grey cabinet, priming changed ur minds.  Weird, I know, but after seeing how bright and sunshiny the kitchen felt with the white primer, we wanted something lighter.  However, everybody painting everything white all of the time no matter what it is has really turned me off from white kitchen cabinets.  Plus, I had my heart set on grey.  So the compromise was a very light grey.  After the first coat, they looked white.  I was nervous.  I doubted how light I went.  But they look grey now and almost spot on to the color sample.  Heavenly.

This is the exact paint we bought – link.  We didn’t buy the paint+primer in once since we already primed.

 

 

Just for fun, lets look at the sidebyside for the before and after painted cabinets:

Side by side. After on the left, before on the right.

So here’s where we stand on that checklist of ours:

• Prime, paint, and seal the cabinets. (we opted to not seal)
• Buy new hardware and add it to the cabinets (duh)
• Paint the walls and ceiling
• Re-do the countertop (either paint or re-laminate)
• Replace the floor
• Finally finish installing the big light
• Replace the under cabinet light
• Find a permanent solution for the trash and recycle bins (on our way!)
• Make the upper corner shelf open shelving (just have to add the shelves back in – more on that later)
• Possibly replace the above-window light
• Add some sort of curtains to the window and the door
• Strip and repair the doors to the outside and to the basement
• Paint the doors to the outside and the basement
• Bright high glass white paint on the trim
• Create a family command center on the big open wall that includes a calendar, mail center, meal planner, and anything else we may find useful.
• Decorate.
• Enjoy.

Stay tuned!